Snap Hires Meta Veteran Ajit Mohan as President of APAC

Social media company Snap has hired Ajit Mohan as its president of APAC to lead its business in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

Mohan joined the Snapchat parent company from Facebook parent Meta, where he most recently served as vice president and managing director of India. Before that, he held other executive roles across the region, including one as CEO of Disney’s Hotstar, a Snap spokesperson told PYMNTS via email.

“Ajit’s leadership will help enable us to accelerate our growth across APAC, and we could not be more thrilled to have Ajit joining the Snap team,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in a memo to the global Snap team that was provided to PYMNTS.

In his new role, Mohan will lead cross-functional efforts across the APAC region, oversee local operations and head Snap’s go-to-market strategy, according to the email.

Regional APAC sales teams will report to him as the new APAC president, similar to the global structure in the Americas and the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, per the email.

Snap’s first president of EMEA — former Google UK managing director Ronan Harris — joined the company last month.

The APAC region contains 75% of the total addressable markets of smartphone users who are 13 years old or older and do not yet use Snapchat, the email stated.

“[Mohan is] a talented leader with a breadth of experience that will serve our community and partners in wonderful ways!” Spiegel said in the memo.

In a statement provided to PYMNTS, Meta Vice President of Global Business Group Nicola Mendelsohn said that Mohan decided to step down from his role at Meta to pursue another opportunity after playing an important role in shaping and scaling Meta’s India operations.

“We remain deeply committed to India and have a strong leadership team in place to carry on all our work and partnerships,” Mendelsohn said in the statement. “We are grateful for Ajit’s leadership and contribution and wish him the very best for the future.”

PYMNTS research has found that 43% of consumers in Australia — one of the markets encompassed in Mohan’s new role — report that they used their smartphones at least once during their shopping journeys during 2021.

That figure was up from just 29% a year earlier, and it is one percentage point higher than the average figure of 42% reported by consumers in six countries surveyed by PYMNTS for “The 2022 Global Shopping Index: UAE Edition,” a PYMNTS and Cybersource collaboration.